Authorities, opposition, scheduling repeat elections for December 15, bury vote reform, says expert
Kyiv, September 25 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The scheduling of the elections to the Verkhovna Rada for December 15 in the problem constituencies has buried hopes of election reform in Ukraine, leading expert of CIS-EMO International Election Monitoring Organization Oleh Vernyk has said.
"We have to state that the authorities and opposition, effectively without a fight, have surrendered a unique opportunity they had – to try to conduct modernization, reform of Ukraine's election legislation right now ahead of the Vilnius Summit," he said at the press conference hosted by Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.
According to the expert, by scheduling elections in the repeat constituencies "both the authorities and opposition amicably resolved their problems."
Vernyk said that the opposition is sure that it will win in these constituencies, and that's why it decided to sacrifice election legislation reform for the sake of the victories of their candidates.
"If the opposition designated their desire to speed up the elections in the five problem constituencies and connected it with the demand with speeding up election legislation reform, there would be a chance to start reform in autumn 2013," he said.
As reported, the Verkhovna Rada has scheduled for December 15, 2013 repeat parliamentary elections in the five majority constituencies – No. 94 (Obukhiv, Kyiv region), No. 132 (Pervomaisk, Mykolaiv region), Nos. 194 and 197 (Cherkasy region), and No. 225 (Shevchenkivsky district in Kyiv). According to the law, election process is to start 60 days before the day of voting.
The CEC was charged with reporting about the launch of the election process at least the next day after the law comes into force.